We frequently hear that we can’t have privacy and security; sadly, that is often still the case as an audit of over 1,000 top websites analyzed for security and privacy practices showed an alarming trend for the third year in a row. The Online Trust Alliance said, “Sites either qualify for the Honor Roll or fail the Audit. In other words, sites increasingly either take privacy and security seriously and do well in the Audit, or lag the industry significantly in one or more critical areas.”

There is good news and bad news coming out of the audit (pdf). The good news is that 52 percent of websites, the highest percent in nine years of the annual analysis, qualified for the OTA’s Honor Roll. The flipside is that 46 percent of the websites failed the audit; of those, bank did the worst.